Some who follow my journey

Our journey flies by

Banking

I haven’t posted here since July because I’ve found it difficult to be anywhere on line. I’m only minimally connected, yet I know GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson referenced Syrian refugees as rabid dogs, a couple other contenders suggest prioritizing Christians, another gleefully touts building a fence around Mexico to stop the influx of illegal “aliens.” The amount of crazy here soars beyond troubling into a whole new universe.

Terrorism and a looming US presidential election have collided to create a 21st century black hole where fact-checking has been sucked dry, taking humanity as collateral damage. What remains is no shortage of bigotry. In fact, racism and profiling exist in abundance, as if the sanctity of human suffering is only the luxury of a particular people of a certain faith.

Any suggestion of compassion for basic human rights not to mention common sense are quickly and loudly denounced because those of us with even a modicum of empathy are what?…too tolerant?

It is frighteningly predictable the House voted the other day to require stringent vetting of any Syrian or Iraqi refugees despite all factual evidence disproving theories that they are the terrorists. Here’s hoping the House shares this screening expertise with the Vatican, NRA, IRS and our Banking and Securities sectors.

Equally troubling are that the misguided senses of entitlement reach into our own homes where politicians want the power to impose their beliefs over what may be in a woman’s uterus while bellowing about government being too big, thereby not in the business of providing aid to mothers and their newborns. And, you should see the carnage of this kind of hypocrisy in urban public school systems.

How can those who pretend to care so much for the United States feel no responsibility not only for the freedoms we are all assured but for the essence and tenets of the Christianity they tout as a litmus test when their words and actions oppose every value that religion represents?

Aren’t we better than this? In the 1950s when McCarthy was saving the world by outing Communists and “homosexuals,” at least you had to find the news to find the insanity. How is it with the ubiquitous access to information and even facts(!) today’s candidates don’t recall our own terrorist Hall of Fame—Oklahoma’s Timothy McVeigh, Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, the Columbine High School Massacre duo of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and the Ku Klux Klan, to name a few. They’re inconvenient reminders, not irrelevant freaks of nature, and it would serve our politicians well to acknowledge the inflammatory vitriol they screech into microphones and disseminate in forty character Tweets fuel equally the angry, displaced and, yes, even Christians of the nation they profess to love.

It is terrifying to be riddled with endless commentary over unthinkable atrocities like the most recent Mali and Paris terrorist attacks on the heels of yet another school shooting in the United States, while hundreds of thousands of war-torn refugees suffer shakedowns and now stringent screening to find refuge.

But I’m not going to be intimidated anymore by the insinuation perpetuated by those who don’t have a clue that the promise of sanctuary is but a fairy tale unless we take their lead. Our humanity is not represented by the irrational exuberance of a one percent, a gender or the randomness of birthplace.

So there. I am heading into the Thanksgiving week grateful for my friends and family and all those I know who are smarter and more compassionate than the trending social media would lead us to believe. It’s time to focus on what’s important, not the loudest carnival barker in a tent.